


Realignment

by verybadhedgehog



Series: Asking Too Much [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: First Order rivalry, M/M, Reunion Sex, The Force, fraught concept of loyalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-07-29 12:59:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7685539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verybadhedgehog/pseuds/verybadhedgehog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren has returned to the Finalizer, in secret, to speak in confidence with General Hux. Persuasion, and choices.<br/>(probably best to read part 2 of the series before you read this)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pillow Talk

**Author's Note:**

> This is a revised version of chs 4-6 of the abandoned work "An Unexpected Return" –  <http://archiveofourown.org/works/5696437> – you will find a longer author's note there explaining my decisions related to revising and reposting this work, including making it compliant with Fierce And Barely Concealed, with which it is now part of a series.
> 
> The first chapter of this work is almost entirely brand new content. 
> 
> Other notes about the work and this little 'verse in general – it sticks to the old headcanons I developed for Hux back before "Armitage Day" when we found out his actual backstory.
> 
> Hit me up on the [tumblr hell site](http://verybadhedgehog.tumblr.com) to yell at me about any of this.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A physical and emotional reunion, and a surely unthinkable proposition.

Ren had returned to the _Finalizer_ ; had surprised Hux with a newly warm demeanour, had carefully crafted an idiosyncratic gift; had listened to Hux recount his unnerving dreams; and had claimed that the Force itself was in some way linking the two of them together, before finally taking the General by the hand and suggesting they retire to bed. 

They undressed more quickly than they had before; Ren unusually having already removed his outer layers, and Hux was hasty to the point of slapdash with respect to squaring away his discarded uniform. He had to be close to Ren _now_ , skin to skin against him, touching him, absorbing his warmth, now, now, _now_. 

“Wanted this,” Hux said in between grabbed kisses. “Wanted this back.” He clutched Ren tight against him and dug his fingers into the muscles at the back of Ren’s waist. “You’re real.”

He was real and warm and his heart beat thick and strong.

“Yes. And you can do anything to me. Anything.”

Hux brought his hand around the front of Ren’s waist, and smoothed his thumb over the crinkled, wrung-out blast crater that was Ren’s bowcaster scar. “You don’t mind me touching this?”

“No. I told you. You can do anything to me.”

Hux caressed Ren’s cratered side, and leant his face into Ren’s shoulder to lick at the long scar left by the Jakku Scavenger’s lightsaber. Ren tipped his head back against the pillow and shivered at the touch of Hux’s tongue.

They began to slide and tangle against each other; friction and warmth and desire making body contact alone feel hot, burning, electric, intense. Hux’s hand trailed from Ren’s bowcaster scar over the planes of his belly then through the line of rough dark hair that led to Ren’s cock. Finally he had it again, hot and heavy in his hand. “I won’t last too long,” Ren warned as Hux stroked and squeezed him against his palm.

“I don’t care. Just tell me you want me.” Hux carried on kissing Ren’s scars, his neck, his face, his hot mouth.

“I do. I want you so much. Fuck, just to have your hands on me again.”

Hux stroked him in long slow pulls, and his moans and sighs filled Hux’s ears. “I like this,” Hux whispered. “I like having this effect on you.” He kept on at it, slow, drinking in Ren’s noises and kissing him, hot, wet and breathy.

“Really am close now,” Ren warned again, breath hitching. With a gasping, nearly sobbing moan, he spilled himself into Hux’s hand.

Hux cleaned them both up with a tissue from his nightstand.

“You’re so good, Hux. So good to me,” Ren said, through recovering breaths. 

“Was it worth coming all this way for?”

“I didn’t cross half the galaxy just for a hand job.” Ren’s eyes closed and he sighed. “Though it was very necessary.”

Hux tucked his arm over Ren’s chest and pressed himself up against his hip, letting his erection nudge into him, as, potentially, a sort of hint. It was so odd to have him in his arms again, after all the fuckups and the stupidity and despair and quiet, empty resignation. He would take it, though. Of course he would take it.  

After a little while, Ren turned his head and gazed at him with a kind of awed yearning.

“You’re still so beautiful.”

The first time Ren had said such a thing, it had hardly seemed believable. It was still ridiculous. But he really seemed to mean it, and that was a comfort. Something to cling to.

Ren raised himself up on an elbow. “So lovely,” he said, looking down on Hux with rapt adoration. “I never want to go without you again,” he breathed, lowering himself a couple of inches down Hux’s body. He licked the sheen of sweat that had formed in the dip of Hux’s collarbone, his tongue warm, wet and welcome. He kissed and raked his teeth over Hux’s chest, heaving as it was with coarse, anticipatory breaths. “So lovely,” he murmured again, and kissed everything he found beneath him, as Hux made barely audible noises in the back of his throat. He kissed down Hux’s side, letting his tongue draw the lightest of lines over the softest portions of Hux’s torso and abdomen. His long fingers traced roughly equal mirroring lines on Hux's opposite flank; teasing, exquisite, unbearable. Hux bit his lip hard to stop from whining as Ren’s teeth raked gently over the crest of his hip, biting and breathing and tonguing and tasting.  

“Don’t expect me to last much, either,” Hux muttered between breaths.

“Not important. Just want to suck you. Want your beautiful cock in my mouth.”

He took Hux into his mouth with one slow long moan. He sucked and his tongue made its characteristic lavish undulations; Hux arched his back, bit his lip, and tried to hold on. Ren’s warm strong hands held him at the waist, long strong fingers spread out, pulling Hux into him; into his hot, wet, wonderful mouth with its wicked tongue that lashed and licked and cupped and flicked and undid him completely. 

Hux surrendered himself to it, letting loose a broken cry; overwhelmed with the sensation of what had so long been denied him.

Ren swallowed and licked. His hair brushed against Hux’s thighs. “Hadn’t tasted you since I was in recovery,” he said, victorious. It was true. Ren had asked for it then, in an offhand manner, and Hux had unbuttoned himself and let him. He’d rested a gloved hand on the non wounded side of Ren’s face, and Ren had suckled and licked at him. Hux had been concerned that Ren might open up his wound, so it was all done in a rather restrained fashion. That had been the last sexual contact between them. Not exactly disappointing, but lacking much in the way of passion and fire; and resigned to a certain detachment, where better men would probably have managed tenderness.

Ren hauled himself back up the bed. Hux lay on his side, facing him. “I wanted you back in my bed," Hux said, and traced a finger along Ren’s long scar. “I missed you. Wouldn’t have admitted it, ever.” His hand trailed down and rested on Ren’s warm chest, where a strong heartbeat pulsed through his palm.

“I thought of you,” Ren said. “When I was alone. It helped.”

“I thought of you sometimes. Here. Despite everything.”

“Was there… no, I shouldn’t ask.”

“What is it?”

“I shouldn’t ask. I would maybe have sensed it. But. Was there anyone else? While I was gone.”

“No. Nobody else.” It was true. He hadn’t really considered it, not seriously. An officer of lower rank had flirted with him, but had refrained from propositioning him directly, much to Hux’s relief. He had been forced to rebuff another of his mother’s promised introductions to young women and men of semi-noble birth. Other than that, he had been left alone.

“Nor for me. It wouldn’t have been possible.”

Hux reflected on that for a moment. “When I said I missed you, I don’t mean that I stood on the bridge sighing and pining for you.”

“Of course not.”

“But in here, you know. In this bed.”

“You missed my warm, strong body.”

Hux laughed. “You like to flatter yourself, but yes, obviously.”

 “I tried not to think about you at all; and succeeded, in clearing you from my mind. It was a distraction at first, you see, from the discipline of my training. You approve of discipline, don’t you?”

What a damned sneaky question that was. Some things about Ren had changed, but some very much remained the same. “Yes, of course.”

“Then, later, when I allowed myself to indulge in memories, it became a comfort. You; my rival, my lover, my comfort.”

“Your rival,” Hux murmured. “I like that.” He rather liked the other parts, too.

 

* * *

 

 

“While I was… during my training… I heard voices. I remembered voices. It seemed to be a test; something else I had to resist.”

Hux stroked Ren’s hair. “What do you mean by voices? Whose voices?”

“From before. From years ago. My mother. Sometimes my father. Sometimes my father, but from the end.”

Hux hoped Ren wouldn’t cry.

“You say it appeared to be a test – you mean you now don’t believe it was?”

“Everything was a test. In some way. Those voices, making me feel things. Calling me to the Light. I used my training: it would hold them back for a while.” He stopped for a moment, deciding what to say. “I couldn’t permit myself to ignore the voices of the dead, however. We have to listen to the dead and honour their testimony. That has always been my practice.” He brought Hux’s hand up in front of his face, and looked at it mournfully. “There were voices among them I didn’t recognise. I heard your voice, too, among those of the living.”

“Me? What was I saying?”

Kylo lowered his eyes. “Hmm. Now it’s for me to feel shy. You said things that a General of the First Order would never say.”

The old affliction seized Hux again – an oddly sweet and cold pain across his chest. It had him consciously holding back his own tears. He could not cry now, not about this, though he wanted to. He so terribly wanted to confess that Kylo was probably hearing those words because he actually remembered them being spoken. All those months ago, right here in this bed, as Kylo slipped into sleep. Hux had not meant them, of course, because he had only been pretending, imagining what it might be like to care deeply for such a creature as Kylo. _Like this. It would be exactly like this._

It was wrong to lie. It was very often correct and expedient to lie, and a lie of omission was the best lie of all. Yet he needed to know. He could ask the question without confirming the truth of the answer. He could feign a casual, incidental interest. 

“What kind of things?”

“Nice things. Reassuring.” _It’s alright, darling, I promise._ “It was welcome to me. To my mind, you of all people would not be trying to seduce me to the Light.”

“I’m… I’m glad it helped.”

“So much. I’m sorry about everything before. We started to talk, but we didn’t get to say enough.”

“No. He took you away. I’m sorry too. You should know that.”

“I shouldn’t have expected too much from you. I think I am always going to want too much from you.”

Hux shifted himself on his pillows. “Never mind that. He took you away, when we started talking again. I was supposed to have the duty of escorting you to him. He apparently changed his mind. Kylo, how much does he know?”

“Not all of it. I’m sure not all of it. I tried to tell you once, do you remember?”

“Not really. Maybe.” He didn’t remember. If Ren had actually told him clearly and unambiguously instead of _trying_ to tell him, the message might have been received and understood.

Ren propped himself up on his elbows. “I tried to tell you we were safe, in here, but I didn’t put it as clearly as I might have, and you weren’t listening. You don’t always listen, Hux. It would be easier if you listened properly.”

“Does he know you’re here? I assume you think not.”

“I hope not.”

“Bloody hell, Ren. You _hope_ not.”

Ren sat up and took a short moment in thought. His tone changed. “Do you feel safe?” 

“Here and now, or more generally?”

“More generally. Secure in your position?”

Hux made a hollow laugh. “What do you bloody think? And, besides, I already told you. Now who ought to listen properly?”

“You’ve always had a tendency towards paranoia. I think, now, it may be deserved.”

Hux’s head jerked up and his eyes were cold fire. “Who is it? It’s Nareese, isn’t it? Or Kells.”

“I can’t say with certainty. But I hear things. And I feel how things have shifted. Altered.”

Hux sat upright now. “What do you hear? Tell me, Ren, this is vital.”

“I am telling you. Nareese wants it: we all sense that. But Snoke has begun to speak favourably of Kells and Beynon. I hear their names mentioned more. Alongside yours, still.”

“Beynon? He’s nothing but a yes man.”

“I fear that may be what the Supreme Leader wants.”

“Ren, we have to do something about this. Who still supports me? I need names.”

“I don’t know for certain. It isn’t as easy for me to know these things as you seem to think.”

“You don’t know? Why the hell didn’t you try to find out before coming here?”

“This was my one opportunity. I had to take it.”

“If I’m going to launch a fightback against these people I need support. I need intel.”

“I’m doing the best I can. I’m here, warning you. I didn’t have the freedom to find out more. You don’t think I can interrogate top ranking personnel for my own, let’s recall your precise words, ‘personal interest’, and expect the Supreme Leader not to notice.”

“No. Damn it.”

“I believe your staff here are loyal. And I feel that most officers are loyal to you, but if the decision to replace you were to come from the top…”

“I know. I was quite prepared for you to cut me down, you know. Execute me. Prepare the way for a replacement. So why do I suddenly care so much now?”

“Self-preservation is the most basic of instincts. The living Force that flows through us does not wish to be extinguished.”

“It always comes back to the Force with you.”

Ren looked confused. “Of course it does. How could it not?” He looked at Hux with a serious, earnest expression, and reached out to stroke the soft golden-red hair at the side of his temple. “You are a strongly burning fire. I don’t want you to be put out.”

Hux smiled at this ridiculous piece of poetry. Ren leant in to kiss him, as if this were the time and place for kissing. There was a potential coup – or a potential purge, with him on the wrong end of it, _and this bloody man thinks a soft kiss on the cheek appropriate._ He really ought to be getting dressed and making plans, not perched naked on his bed.

“You were afraid,” Ren said. “I’ve not seen you afraid before. It wasn’t right. Something has happened to you.”

“I’ve become weak.”

“You haven’t.”

He wished Ren wouldn’t try to flatter him.

He wondered, through more of Ren’s kisses, what it was that Ren wanted from him, or intended from this visit. He must, logically, simply be paying a flying visit for old time’s sake, and would then disappear never to be seen again. The alternative was too terrifying to consider.

 

* * *

 

At some point, Ren had lain him down again, or they had both lain down. Ren’s lips were persistent against his neck and his body was hot. He smelled of heat and desire, wine-barrel headiness and spice, smoke-sharp Bezari cardamom and surrender. 

Hux let their legs tangle together again. The whole length of his body pressed up against Ren like a vine presses against a tree. He had already grown hard – his body’s opinions were forthright.

“I want you more than ever,” Ren breathed. “Need you.”

“Do you want me to fuck you?”

“Yes of course I want you to, can you not tell?” Ren’s voice turned to a desperate hiss against Hux’s earlobe. “I have been without your cock inside me for a whole fucking year and I need it. I need it.” 

Ren wriggled Hux off him, spread his legs and shoved one of Hux’s pillows under his hips. 

“I love how keen you are,” Hux said with a little smile as he fetched the necessary substance from his nightstand drawer. “Only had myself to use this on. Not the same.” He massaged Ren’s eager arse with two slick fingers, pressing on him then in him.

“Going to get what I want at last,” Kylo muttered.

“And what do you want?”

“I want you. I want you, Hux. I want you inside me. You know what I want. You know what you can do to me.”

He did know. He knew very well. He squeezed the pads of his fingers up against the firm and lovely hidden target and watched Ren’s eyelashes flutter. He continued to squeeze and press, marvelling at the wonderful soft sighs and moans he was drawing from Ren’s throat, and just slightly licking his lips at the sight of the clear fluid beading then falling from the tip of Ren’s cock.

“Please.”

The air between them held the thick weight of Ren’s gaze as Hux slicked his dick up in a few strokes. He lined himself up and took a moment to glory at the sight of Kylo Ren laid out before him, open, wet, quivering for him, chest flushed and sweat-dampened, cock hard and drooling against his splendid abdomen. His knight had returned to him, however improbably, coming back to his bed for pleasure. He slid in with slow exquisite delight. It was as close to perfection as he’d ever had: hot, velvety, tight and heavenly. 

With a hand in the small of Hux’s back, Kylo pulled them closer together, drawing Hux deeper inside him. “It’s been such a long time. I wanted you so much. I wanted this so much.”

They rocked together, breathing, low, heavy, deep. Pleasure wrapped itself around Hux’s whole body, like a fine piece of mesh drawn over his skin leaving nowhere untouched.

“So good, Hux. Fuck me. Make me feel.”

Ren pulled Hux down to him by his shoulders, into more hot, open kisses. Hux braced himself on his elbows and mouthed at Ren’s damp red-flushed neck as he pushed into him over and over, quietly grunting with each hot pulse of pleasure.

Ren sighed and muttered Hux’s name, and “it’s you, it’s you, it’s you,” and Hux felt, as he pressed against Ren’s sweat-slick and splendid body, as if he really were completing some kind of missing part of Ren. Ren needed this. Not only to be fucked, but _this_. Like _this_ : sweet and sweeter yet, slow and intense. Building to something inevitable, that mesh of sensation tightening over his skin. “I haven’t come inside you for more than a year,” he gasped into Ren’s ear. “Tell me you want me to.” 

“Yes. Yes. I want you to. Hux. Come in me. Please. Please.”

Hux’s hips brought him instinctively to where he needed to be, and he unloaded into Ren’s heat with a heavy, throaty sigh. His head flopped forward, forehead sticking to Ren’s shoulder, and he slowly pulled out, panting, then collapsed fully onto Ren’s body.

“Don’t leave me. I don’t know what your mission is, or what you have to do, but don’t leave me, not tonight.”

“I won’t.”

Ren held him with sweaty arms, against a sweaty and sticky body. He didn’t mind. Their breathing slowed.

“Do you feel the Living Force between us? I feel it flowing so strongly; you must be able to feel a hint of it too.” Ren whispered urgently. “Tell me you can feel something. Tell me what you feel.”

Hux nestled his face into the crook of Ren’s neck. “I think I do feel something, maybe. I feel my blood going through my veins, it seems like. Something like electricity. I feel very alive. I feel us breathing together, I’ve never been so aware of that. And I feel your heart beating, of course.”

“Yes, I think you do feel it. That something like electricity.”

“The feeling alive and the heart beating faster; that’s just body chemicals, right? Hormones and neurotransmitters doing their job.”

Hux felt the warm chest he was clinging onto shake. Ren was giggling. “That is part of it. And this is also a manifestation of the Living Force.” 

Fingertips gently caressed his arms and his back, light as feathers. “I like it. I can say that much.”

“That’s good. The Living Force has many mysteries.”

Hux snorted to himself at Ren’s ludicrous pomposity and at the fact he retained it even during a tender and intimate post-shag embrace. He also tried vaguely to recall whether he had ever heard Ren use the term “the _Living_ Force” before. He didn’t believe so. That was something else that had changed about the man. It would all add up to something. A pattern would emerge.

“I doubt the Living Force as you seem to call it now will wash the filth off of you.”

“Always so fastidious.”

“I mean it,” Hux said, rolling off Ren and making for the refresher. “Ugh, you’re probably making a wet patch. I did not miss the wet patches, by the way, while you were gone.”

 

* * *

 

Clean, towel dried and moisturised, Hux sat on the edge of his bed and watched Ren dry himself. There was more scar tissue on Ren’s back and thighs – he had felt an oddly corrugated area on Ren’s thigh earlier. 

“Did you fight her again?”

“I fought her, and my former master. She is much stronger now. I asked her to join us. I did as I was required.”

“I’ll destroy her. If you want. We’ll find her. A missile strike.”

“Always ready with the easy answers. If it were as simple as that, it would have been done.”

“Why the hell not? Get her out of the way.” _So she doesn't hurt you again._ “I can use the resources at my disposal. Our forces are still mine to command. I’m not completely washed up, not yet.”

“My orders were to bring her to him,” Ren said in a measured tone. “They haven’t changed. You know that.”

Hux sighed. “I know.”

“He wants her on side more than he wants her dead.”

“Then it is a simple question of obeying orders.”

“It’s not that.” Ren frowned, then fixed an intense look on Hux.  “I know in the Force that I must ally with her. We will meet again.”

“Third time lucky?”

“Something like that. It isn’t willed that we attack her.”

“Ren?”

“Mm?”

“You said that _you_ would ally with _her_. Not that _she_ would ally with _you_.”

“Yes. I did.”

The General’s eyes widened. “You have something quite serious in mind.”

“I have the chance to set things right. To make things better, at least.” He chewed on his lip, and nodded. “To make things better.”

“Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do?”

“There’s more to it than that.” He again sucked his lip in thought for a moment, and stroked Hux’s cheekbone with his thumb. “I’m touched that you offered to come to my aid. With your ships and missiles and such. What happened to the old General Hux, who would have sneered at me and told me to fix my own problems?”

“I don’t know, if I’m honest. I try to be as I should, I really do. Part of me went down with Starkiller.”

“I know. I feel it. I understand.”

“I should really have gone down with the base, like the rest of them. Poor sods. There’d have been honour in that.”

“There might be honour elsewhere. With me.”

Hux ignored what Ren might have been trying to say.  It was far too dangerous to face head on. “If I were the man now that I was then, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“We have both been changed by seeing our hopes fall. I am stronger now than before my defeat.”

“Oh, don’t. You sound like some awful _‘turn failure into success’_ lecture. We had one in our officers’ training, final year. This dreadful little man who’d been to a Sullustan university of all places. I don’t know how he was ever allowed on board.”

Kylo laughed.

“It’s actually quite a funny story. Father thought he’d been made a proper fool of – the course administrator got the most stupendous bollocking. Remind me to tell you one day.” Hux stopped to think. “I don’t even know if there’s going to _be_ a one day.” 

“I think there will. I am being guided onwards. I’m trying to do what I couldn’t before.”

“Before your training?”

“Before I learned.”

“Really, Ren, you must tell me what this is. You’ve given me a series of clues, and I need the whole story.”

“Hux. Those voices. You’ll think I’m mad.”

“And I don’t already?”

“My grandfather. For years I wanted to hear his voice, to have his guidance.”

“Mmm?” Hux had an awful feeling he knew what Ren was about to say, and it would be incontrovertible evidence that Ren, and quite probably the both of them, had lost reason.

“He did. He finally did. He spoke. And I know what I have to do.”

There it was. As expected. The dread hand of lunacy.

“What do you have to do?”

“I have to go. I have to leave. I have to do as the Force would have it, as the Living Force flows through me and guides me.”

“But you came back. You came back, just in order to leave again.”

“I came back. I came back to see you.”

Hux embraced Ren again, burying his face into Ren’s neck. “You came back to see me. For _me_.” He shivered. “I want to say I don’t believe it.”

“We are important to each other. You know it’s true. We do have a connection. We do. You feel it. And haven’t I shown you?”

“You did.” He held on to Ren and tried not to think too hard. Those dreams had come from somewhere, and Ren claimed to have experienced the exact same visions. To make sense of any of this would require a leap of faith. But Hux didn’t have leaps of faith. He had the warm body of Kylo Ren in his arms and he smelled so good and felt so right.

From amid warm, comforting sensation, a thought came.

“How can you be sure that it’s your grandfather who speaks to you?”

Ren’s eyes shone. “I see him. I don’t only hear him. I see him.”

“How? A ghost? You don’t believe in… no, of course you believe in ghosts. Of course you do.”

“It’s not a question of believing. He appears, he manifests from the Force itself.”

It wasn’t worth arguing about it. 

“He has been teaching me. I have learnt a lot, about the past. Everyone lied to me, before. Everyone.” 

Hux stroked his back. He did feel a slight twinge of guilt.

“I won’t be made a fool of any more. I won’t be used any more. It happened to him and he doesn’t want it to happen to me.”

“How do you mean, it happened to him? I heard rumours that he betrayed the Empire at the end, you mean that?”

“No. I mean everything else. You weren’t taught the real history. The old Emperor lied to him.”

 _If I were emperor_ , Hux thought, in a surge of protective emotion, _I wouldn’t lie to you. I’d be so good to you. I’d never want to see you hurt. We’d be together all the time. You’d hold my hand and I would feel strong._

“My training was supposed to make me stronger.”

“Did it not?”

“Only partially.”

Getting useful information out of Kylo was like pulling teeth. It was apparent that something about his training had been deeply painful, as Kylo had feared while he was in recovery as the Finalizer made its way towards Snoke’s hidden citadel. Hux remembered quite well that Kylo had not been alone in his fear. 

“I told you before, about… Han Solo”

He had, once he was recuperating. He had wept angrily, and declared that it hadn’t helped and it was supposed to help. Hux had offered some platitude about how it might prove to help in time, and how Kylo still had his strength and his Force powers.

“You did.”

“It was supposed to make me stronger. Cut my ties with the past, remove the old attachments, prove my loyalty, prove my commitment to the Dark side of the Force.” Ren shuddered with a long ragged sigh, then gathered himself again. “That was, I thought, the theory.”

“It didn’t prove to be the case, I take it.”

“No. And I don’t believe it was ever meant to be. Snoke lied to me. I sense it very strongly.”

“What does this mean? Preferably in concrete terms.”

“He wanted to isolate me. And he wanted me to suffer. He knew I would mourn my father.” Ren sobbed, quietly, and kept speaking. “He knew I would be further torn apart. He knew I would suffer and have nowhere to turn. It was only to make me suffer. Only for pain. Of all kinds.” He turned his head away. “They aren’t all from battle,” he said. “I saw you looking.”

“Oh. Well, you’re here now.”

This was not good. It was not right. 

“You don’t have nowhere to turn. You came here, didn’t you?” Hux felt he was on the edge of something important; a similar sensation to that which he’d had retrieving Ren from the snowbound collapse of Starkiller. “You came here. To me.”

Ren smeared a tear across his cheek. “Will you help me?” 

“Yes. I told you I was going to look after you, back then. I didn’t get the chance. I should like to honour my intention. I care about you a great deal, I find.” 

“Come with me.”

“Go with you? Ren, that’s impossible.”

“You know the old saying, _the way out is the nearest door_?”

“Of course.”

“What does it mean to you?”

Hux frowned.

“Humour me.”

“Ha. I keep humouring you. What it means to me is this: there’s always an easy way out for slackers, those who don’t want to put the work in and make the grade. But if you want to work and achieve, you stick with it. You stay with the program, see it through.”

“Yes. That’s what people say, isn’t it? But what if it’s a lot more simple than that? What if all it means is that you can quit any time you like?”

“Of course, if you’re a quitter, a slacker, a coward.”

“Or if you are a strong, free person, with a strong will. The way out is the nearest door. All you have to do is leave. That is why, and how, I am here.”

“Ren. Ren. You are glorifying the actions of traitors. We have had, let us not forget, soldiers who did not stay with the program and see it through.” He touched Ren’s upper arm. “You were wounded, were you not, by one FN-2187, a highly promising young soldier who decided he didn’t want to stick it. For him, the way out was the bloody port hangar.”

“I knew something wasn’t right with him,” Ren said, sounding tired now. “But I let it pass by. I don’t regret that any more. It’s all part of something much larger.”

“I can’t condone treason and desertion. I can’t.”

“Hux. I want to be with you. I see you by my side, giving me strength.”

“Kylo, I _want_ to. It’s easy to _want_ things. I want to be with you all the time now – it feels different now and I don’t quite understand how or why. But we can’t.”

“We’re going to be OK,” Ren said again, kissing Hux’s forehead and cheeks. “I’m going to look after you. I’ll build you a little house.”

That was the phrase from the dream of the forest. _“I’ve built you a little house.”_ It was not a coincidence. Hux hadn’t said it out loud, hadn’t fed Ren the line. And surely that was what Ren was referring to. It was not a coincidence.

Bewildered but tired, Hux set an early alarm on his chrono, to give himself time to get ready and discuss some sort of actual concrete plan with Ren. He tucked himself against Ren’s back and fell into sleep.

 

* * *

 

That night, Hux dreamt of the interrogation room again, the same scene that had formed part of his uncanny recurring series of dreams. This time, Ren undid his binders and massaged the circulation back into his wrists and hands before scooping him up into his arms. “It’s alright. I’ve got you now. You’re alright now,” he said. Hux put his arms around Ren’s neck and buried his face in Ren’s cowl, as Ren carried him out and away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By Vader's old hat, it's some brand new content!
> 
> (The saying "the way out is the nearest door" is something I used to see cited by ex-scientologists and attributed to LRH – as a way of encapsulating how cult-like organisations frame members' thinking)


	2. The Nature of Loyalty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux has to decide to what and to whom he is loyal.

Hux viewed his face in the mirror dispassionately as he dragged the blade across it. He was not looking at himself, and he was certainly not about to catch his own eye, not for another minute or so. He was looking at areas of a surface, and performing an action on that surface. The aim was to be smooth about the face and neck, not to be contemplating oneself and asking what the hell one was going to do.

He neatened the line of his sideburns and combed his hair, fixing it in place with two dabs of the standard wax.

He finally caught his own eye. It was time to make plans.

The alarm had woken them far too early. It would have been good to have been able to stay in the warmth and comfort offered by Ren’s proximity. During that time Hux thought of euphemistically as “ _before_ ”, the morning routine had been hurried and uncomfortable. The agenda had at that time been simple: make selves presentable and go separate ways as soon as possible.  Now, they could not indulge in the luxury of comfort, but neither could they hurry away. They had to face one another. There were things to discuss.

Hux had washed his tired face, put on a clean slate grey undershirt and a clean pair of socks, and made some caf from his water dispenser. He had sipped on it while watching Ren perform a short repertoire of stretches, had watched him pull on clothes, had not said the things that needed to be said.

Hux left the fresher and attempted a weak smile. “So, then, Knight Commander. How do we proceed?”

“That depends on you.” A non-answer to start with. Encouraging.

Hux pulled on his breeches and adjusted the buttons at the waist. “I don’t want you to go,” he said. “You, it’s fairly clear, can’t stay. And I can’t go with you. So,” he said, adjusting the cuffs and lining them up correctly with respect to his socks, “we have a problem.”

“It’s not that you don’t want me to go. It’s that you don’t want us to be apart.”

“I don’t.”

Hux took his jacket from the unfortunate lopsided, drunken stance it had assumed on its hanger. He wished he had hung it up properly. It had developed the beginnings of a crease across the collarbone.

“Let’s imagine, hypothetically, what we might do.”

“We’d go somewhere safe. I have a few places in mind.”

“Let’s not assume we’d be going anywhere.” Hux held up a hand to silence the objection that would surely come. “Just for the moment, let’s think about what I might do in order to shore up support and discredit opponents.”

Kylo nodded slowly at him. “Alright. Let’s consider that. You would be able to call on the support of loyal officers. But would you be able to do so openly?”

“I have some idea of who I can trust most.”

“You are forgetting what I said. I think this comes from the top. And so do you.”

Hux turned away from Kylo, unable to face this part of it. The fastenings of his jacket offered a short distraction, a displacement activity.

“If I could stay here, which I can’t, and help you out, we could have perhaps one Star Destroyer to stand against the rest of the organisation.”

“And a couple of cruisers. And if we have time, we could play the others off against each other. Kells would stand with me to see Nareese go to the wall.”

“She would stand with Nareese to see _you_ go to the wall.”

It was quite obviously true.

“Fuck. Fuck! Why didn’t you warn me earlier? Why does everything have to be a mad fucking panic with you?”

Hux was pacing up and down now, from the bedroom through to the living area, and up to the desk, then back again, as crisply as he could manage in socks and no boots. There was still a tray with last night’s dinner plate on it, on the big table. He’d have to make sure the droids got that. 

“I had a limited window of opportunity,” Ren said. “This is a concept you’re familiar with? This is something you incorporate into training routines?” 

 _The appalling bloody cheek of the man._ “Yes, obviously.”

“I had to prepare, in secret, and then take my chance. Sending you emails and briefings and dossiers was no fucking part of that.”

Hux narrowed his eyes and sighed. He wished it had been although he appreciated why it couldn’t be.

“Especially since I had no way of knowing how you would respond, and who you would speak to, and if that might expose me.”

“Alright. Fuck. Yes. I understand.”

“This is why I had to use the methods I did and speak to you in person.”

“And if I hadn’t been receptive to your messages?”

“I would have turned away and gone.”  

“You wouldn’t even have gone to bed with me, just for old time’s sake?”

“Probably not.” Kylo fastened his pleated tunic almost up to the top. He had left off his high collar. “You were open to my ideas though. I think a lot of the, you might say groundwork, is already there.”

“What _groundwork_? Stop trying to use my lingo, Ren, it grates.”

“Put it all together.  Your worries. Your belief that I was sent here to kill you. Your fear that you’ve become weak.”

All those things did make Hux feel uncomfortable. His paranoia and his sense that he wasn’t the man he used to be had been making him uneasy for some considerable time before Ren had shown up, to quite explicitly and emphatically _not_ kill him.

“That’s disenchantment,” Ren said.

“It isn’t. I’m not disenchanted.’

“Hmm. I think maybe you are. But we’ll see.”

He sat on his bench and pulled his boots on. The simmering anger Hux had always felt for Kylo Ren was still there, despite all the other opinions that had come to join it. It wasn’t so much that he had to disprove all Ren’s arguments, as it was that Ren still had to phrase everything in this self-important way, as if he were the sodding king of everything that happened. He’d pin him down to specifics and then they’d have at least the start, the bare bones of a basic plan. 

“Alright. Look. If at some hypothetical point in the future, we found ourselves planetside, perhaps with a small number of allies, looking to regroup, what would we do?”

“It would depend on the circumstances. I would need to carry out my calling.”

That wasn’t a complete non-answer, so Hux engaged with it. “So, I think for me there would be two options, in this potential situation. I would either wait for you to carry out your task, if we’re both understanding the same thing by that, and then act reasonably quickly to pick up the pieces; or I would play a much longer game.”

“Yes. That seems reasonable.”

“Reasonable. It’s not fucking reasonable, though, is it? I cannot see how we get from here, to there.”

Kylo sighed, exasperated already. “I can, and so can you. But you won’t let yourself see it, or you won’t let yourself say it. I know what you’re doing.”

“You don’t.” 

“I do. You’re making something be impossible.”

“I can’t go anywhere. Do you not understand the nature of an oath?”

Ren was visibly offended. “I understand the nature of commitment very well. Don’t you dare suggest otherwise.”

Yet he had betrayed his first master, and was in the process of betraying his second.

“I am loyal. I will always be loyal.” Hux stood by his desk to stare Ren down.

“It’s a question of to whom and to what you wish to be loyal.” If this had any impact on Hux, or even made any sense to him, he did not show it. Ren continued. “Consider this. Perhaps the results achieved by the First Order no longer match the stated aims of the First Order.”

“We are pushing on with our expansion. I’m sorry things aren’t going as rapidly as they were when you were racking up empty planets in the Unknown Regions.” He rested back against the desk. “The second phase of a regime change isn’t always straightforward. When we pivot from insurgent to incumbent.” He exhaled angrily. “Why am I explaining this to you?”

“It’s worse than that. Are you actually succeeding in transitioning systems from chaos to order?”

“Don’t think I’ve not noticed you saying ‘you’ instead of ‘we’.”

“Good. Glad you’re paying attention.” 

Ren had never been part of the Order’s military hierarchy, but Hux knew that his ‘you’ didn’t simply mean ‘you and your army’ but ‘you the Order’. Ren was detaching himself. Distancing himself.

“It doesn’t match up. The promise and the reality. In some ways, it is a sham. One thing dressed up as another.”

Hux’s reaction was surely predictable. “My whole life’s work, a sham? My work is discipline, training, and professionalism.”

Ren shrugged. “You, your officers, your troops, all professional, well-trained people. But where are the results? You’ve improved the standard of food in the officers mess: well done on that.”

Hux looked daggers at him, but Ren was not deterred. “Where, actually, is the progress? Where is the order?”

“We have spread order through the galaxy.”

“Look at your data. Look at your reports and your spreadsheets. Even you can see the conflict zones; the losses; the chaos. This is not order.”

Hux had always felt irked when Ren made reference to his administration and record keeping. Typical of someone with no need to keep any records and no idea of the responsibilities of leadership.

“It is war.”

“I don’t recall your ambition being a permanent state of war. You wanted order and security.”

“We have had victories. Great victories. We have built and achieved incredible things. The light of an entire sun…” and for a moment Hux’s pale green eyes shone again with sick, crazed awe at the memory of his most glorious hour, a memory that was doomed to tip forward and unravel into a memory of his greatest failure.

Ren pulled a face. “It was a great achievement, for as long as it lasted.”

“Don’t. Please. Don’t.” Hux’s knuckles were white, and his fingernails dug deep into his palms. It was not enough to hold back the rage that poured out of his poorly healed mental wounds. “In fact, how dare you? I should alert the bridge to your unauthorised presence on this vessel. I should call a meeting with the Supreme Leader and we can all discuss this together. The three of us. I think I shall. I just have to reach out my hand to this comm link and…”

His hand stopped in mid air. Ren was staring at him. “I don’t think so. Any orders I have to not use the Force on you, no longer apply. I will not let you obstruct my mission. Your choices are to join me, or not. There are no other options.”

Hux breathed out very slowly, to calm himself. His hand dropped to his side, and his gaze slipped to the lightsaber hanging from Kylo’s belt. He knew that he was no match for a Knight of Ren and it would be futile to attempt to stand in his way. No matter what had been said last night.

“I will complete my mission. My mission is much more important than your daily tasks. I have to go, and I have to do what I have to do.”

“Are these orders from the Supreme Leader?” Hux was sarcastic.

“No. We’ve been through this.” Ren pretended it wasn’t sarcasm.

“I answer to the Supreme Leader.”  Hux started pacing to and fro again, like an animal in a cage.

“Hux, I am going to leave. If I go and you stay, there is a very real chance that we will end up on opposite sides.”

“Don’t even say that.” Hux was visibly agitated, twitching his hands as he paced. “We are on the same side. We are the First Order. It is us two. The Supreme Leader, and then us two. Together, we will crush those who plot against me and we will stay and make it work.”

“Us two. Together,” Ren said slowly, giving Hux a long meaningful stare from the side of his eyes. Hux thought of the two of them as they had been last night, holding on to each other like nothing else mattered, having the best sex he could remember, telling each other they wanted to be together always. It didn’t help. It was all impossible.

Ren then tried raising the topic of delays to military construction. The next generation of Star Destroyers were already eight months behind schedule. A team of three Knights of Ren had recently visited the main Kuat Entralla yard, rather to Hux’s disapproval. The blanket application of fear did not work: one had to be willing to find out where the delay or fault was and focus one’s efforts there. If they’d only have asked him how to manage a big project and keep it on track.

 Hux batted away most of Ren’s questions, but then gave in a little. “It’s harder than you think, to keep everything functioning.”

“Things are starting to fall apart, aren’t they. Just slightly. Here and there.” Ren’s voice was filled with its old menace.

“Stop this. Stop questioning me. Stop trying to make me feel worse. Telling me I’m falling apart.”

“Not you. Or rather, not only you. Cracks are forming. A time of transformation is upon us. Something new is preparing to be born.”

“Oh, shut up. Please. I can tolerate your nonsense when we’re being intimate, but this is serious now. I have to put my hard head on and face the bloody day.” 

“Let’s talk with a hard head, then.” Ren was acidic. “You can’t afford this war for much longer, Hux. You don’t have the prosperity to pay for it. Your people are getting restless.”

“They shouldn’t be restless. It gets under my skin.”

Ren laughed coldly. “Keep sending stormtroopers to put down the riots. It’ll make the underlying problem go away. Of course it will.”

“So when we send you in to murder and pillage, that makes the underlying problem go away? Same fucking thing.” 

“You think you just scored a point. In fact you’re showing me you see exactly what the problem is here. This isn’t working, is it? This is not what you signed up for, is it?” He was standing nearer to Hux now, leaning into him, speaking a little too close, just as he always used to.

“I signed up for what I signed up for. All of it. I swore an oath.”

“Sounds to me like you don’t have a career. You have a prison.”

“I’m doing my _job_ , which is difficult enough as it is without you messing with my head.”

Hux was abruptly reminded who and what he was really talking to. “Don’t forget, I could _actually_ mess with your head if I wanted to. Really mess you up. But I’m not. I’m going the scenic route around because I want you to see for yourself.”

“No, you’re just fucking up my life again. Why do you keep fucking up my life? Everything was fine. Everything was normal. Then you turn up and you turn my life upside down and tear it apart and make me want things I can’t have. Why? Why not leave me alone?”

“Your life has not been fine and normal. Look what a mess you were when I came here. So jittery and nervous. And afraid. Of me. And you look tired.”

“Thanks. Really. Being kept up until 0230h helped a lot.”

“It’s been getting to you for a long time.”

“Yes. We went over this. The axe is hanging over me. Nareese and Kells and Beynon to name but three have knives at my back. But I keep doing my job. That’s the point.” 

“One of those is your replacement. All lined up and ready to go. It doesn’t matter which. He is already training a replacement for me. I feel it. He likes to have a spare, in reserve.” Ren said with disgust.

“I will remain loyal until the day they cut the stripes off my uniform. That’s what it means, Ren.”

“They’ll do worse than cut the stripes off you. A lot worse. Believe me.”

Hux shuddered. “Don’t.”

Ren brooded in silence for a few moments.  Then he fixed a thoughtful frown on Hux. “Those speeches you make. Do you believe what you’re saying? Tell me, and don’t lie.”

“Of course they’re embellished, let’s not be naive,” Hux admitted. “Exaggerated in places. You know, dressed up a bit for rhetorical effect. I have to inspire people. It's part of my job. My duty.”

“Dressed up? Play acting. Pantomime.” Kylo spat the word.

“I’m sorry?”

“You heard me.”

Hux sighed. “Most are repeats these days. Old ones edited together. I record new bits from time to time.”

“The great orator, General Hux, reduced to a selection of his greatest hits. Inspiring.”

“Fuck off. This is typical of you.”

Kylo laughed. “You’re better than this, Hux, you really are.” 

“I have a job to do. I write to a brief, and we have to take a line. Ellis and her colleagues do the same. We frame things a certain way to get the right response from the citizenry. It’s the art of persuasion. We can’t simply wave our fingers and make people believe,” and he flicked his fingers in a mockery of Ren’s Force gestures, quite aware that this always needled Ren.

“So you’re dishonest.”

“Come on, Ren. Obviously we don’t tell it precisely like it is, warts and all. That’s not how it works. And what would be the point, if we can script the message and deliver it in the right way.”

Kylo leant up against the table. “You could inspire people. Your abilities and the way you care about things. Your officers are inspired by you – I’d never have admitted that before, but it’s true. I feel it. The population, though? Bored to tears.”

“They are not.”

“They are. Hux, nobody likes you, not really, not out there.”

“Thanks for building up my confidence, you shit. Oh, what shall I do, shall I stay on this nice big comfortable Star Destroyer where everyone respects me, or shall I go out into the great wide galaxy where apparently everyone hates me?”

“I don’t hate you, that’s the whole fucking _point_ of this.” Kylo beat his fist against his thigh.  “I want you to come away with me and be by my side, and I want you to see a bit of life instead of shackling yourself to this thing that’s over.”

“It’s not over. Shitting hell!” Hux banged on the desk with the flat of his hand. “I can’t believe I am having negotiations with a fucking enemy agent in my private quarters, on my fucking ship. How has this happened?”

“I don’t work for any enemy. I work for me.”

“Your mother is a Resistance general. Three guesses where you’ll be headed when you leave here.” Not to mention, allegiance with the Jakku girl.

Ren did not acknowledge the very valid point that Hux had made. “You and I want to be together. You said last night that you wanted to be with me all the time. This morning, you put on your uniform and act like you’re trying as hard as you can to pretend it never happened.” That, too, was a valid point. A palpable hit. “This is your chance,” Ren said, shrugging and spreading his big hands out, as if offering the world to Hux.

“I said I want to be with you all the time _but we can’t_. Because we can’t. Because this. Because I swore loyalty.”

The conversation was going around in circles. “So, to what and to whom do you wish to be loyal? Be loyal to your ideals. Find some other way to stability and progress. Until we can, you know. Get rid. You’re too good for this. And you’re in danger here.”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. I may be in danger, but I swore to serve, and I try my best.” Hux gestured fiercely. “But I am _not_ running away to join the Resistance like a cowardly little failed stormtrooper. That is preposterous, whatever has happened between us.”

“Last night was a matter of some consequence.”

“Look, I was emotional, we were emotional, and I really wanted to have sex with you, to be honest, and I said some things that… I can’t do it, it can’t happen.”

Ren’s face began to crumple, horrified. “You said you cared about me. Are you taking that back?”

“No. No, I’m not. I do have feelings for you. I shouldn’t and I wish I didn’t, but I do. You know I do.” Hux felt a terrible guilt at having made Ren think for a moment that he didn’t care for him after all. It hurt.

“So come with me.”

“I am a soldier. I serve. I have done since I was a young cadet. This will not change.”

“Find something worth serving.”

“The Empire is worth serving.”

“This is not the Empire.”

“It will be.”

“You should ask Supreme Leader Snoke what this actually is. He won’t tell you, of course, but…”

“Stop making me out to be a fool. We have setbacks. Any organisation does. But we are the only organisation committed to progress.”

Kylo’s stare was fixed and impassive. Each blink seemed calculated. It was unnerving and infuriating at the same time. This bloody man, standing here, fucking blinking at him, and he knew perfectly well what it meant. He knew perfectly well that he was getting worn down. He couldn’t afford to be worn down.

“I have to hold on to this. I have tens of thousands under my command. We can achieve things. We are achieving things.”

“Come with me. It’s the only way. We’ll have peace and security one day, but you can’t do it here. It’s already too late. You’re too good for this. How many times do I have to ask? Please.”

“You’re asking me to trust you.” _I don’t do trust. Not personal trust. That’s why we have things bigger than ourselves to believe in._

“I failed so many times. But I can get this right. If only you come with me. I’ll give you what you need.”

“Stop _promising_ me things.”

Kylo rubbed the backs of his fingers on his temples, then ran his hands through his hair, interlacing his fingers at the back of his head. He tried again, in what was supposed to be mock desperation. “I fucking need you, would you just please run away with me. We can go anywhere.”

“Don’t try to be funny; this isn’t funny.”

“I know. But we never have to be apart again. I’ve gone through so much to be here, to even admit to myself I needed you.” Ren’s tone changed. “Don’t think I’m not being serious. You cannot imagine what I have gone through; what I’ve seen, what I’ve felt, what I’ve done. What I’ve done to myself. You have no idea.” He shuddered and looked away.

Hux did have some idea. He had seen the scar tissue. And was it unimaginable beyond that? He didn’t want to imagine it, at this point. He needed to keep his thoughts running evenly.  If he could only think for a moment and draw up a list of pros and cons and risks and rewards, analyse the situation properly; he might have a chance. But this was all too much.

“It is simple. I want to be with you now. I need you. Hux. Dion, please.”

“And I want to be with you. Can’t you stay here? Please don’t go.”

“No. I work for myself now. I am, I suppose, technically an enemy agent, and I am really and truly on the run. I have to leave here today, whether you’re with me or not. This is it.”

“On the run. You. On the run.”

“Yes. Me. The chosen one. The apprentice. The enforcer. Broken free and on the run. Now if I can be a traitor, you can too. The way out is the nearest door.”

“Or I can be the one who stays.”

“You can’t do it here. Not from the scrapheap, and not while he remains. I always thought you were biding your time, that you thought one day you’d make your move. Not that you were just treading water waiting to drown.”

The dreams. Ren going somewhere Hux could not follow. Deep water that would drown them both. And then the contrasting version: swimming together, romantic and contented and so glad to have one another.

“You want to make your master happy, while he waits for the perfect moment to open the trap door under you, or do you want to make me happy?” Hux had no answer, so Ren continued. “I care about you. I want to make up to you for all the times I was a shit to you before.” He put his hands together and beseeched. “Please. We can find a lake and go swim in it. I can see myself happy with you. Both of us happy. I actually showed you. A little house. For you.” He bit his bottom lip back as though biting back tears, half-smiling, eyebrows raised, imploring. 

A short spike of sweetness passed through Hux’s heart. “I’d like to see you happy. I would. I didn’t imagine it would be like this.”

“I’m not used to being happy. I think I could learn how, with you. I saw myself with you. The Force itself is showing us the way.”

Hux sighed and put one hand to his chin, fingers covering his mouth. He lowered his gaze, shook his head a few times, and sighed again. “My duty hours start soon. I have to be on post.”

“Do you still have the, uh, 1430-1445 slot open for me?”

“Yep.”

“OK. I’ll stay here. Maybe sleep, meditate for a while, get any guidance from the Force. And you come here at 1430, and either we say our last goodbyes and never see each other again, or you come with me.”

“Yep. I’ll think about everything you said. I’m not saying no, I’m just… I don’t know.”

“I know. I’m asking a lot from you. Too much, perhaps. But I have to ask. This is my mission.” He put his hand on Hux’s forearm and gently squeezed. “Have a good shift. I hope it’s uneventful. Be brave, and come back to me with an answer.”

“I have to go. Don’t want to be on post with tears in my eyes, do I?” Hux slipped his greatcoat around his shoulders, put on his cap, bit down on this inside of his cheeks, and left to go sign on for his duty shift.


	3. Desertion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, he either does or he doesn't. Read and find out, why don't you.

The door latch clicked and the door sigh-slid open.

Hux entered, moving with purpose.

“Is this our fifteen minutes?” asked Ren, from the couch.

“Yep. Can’t talk, got to pack.”

“Oh, so you’re…”

“Shut up. Don’t distract me.”

Hux dragged a small bag out of his wardrobe locker. “Always keep a small bag packed. The essentials.” He quickly checked through the contents and went with haste to the bathroom. Noises emerged; a cabinet being opened and bottles being shoved into a wash bag. Ren stayed quiet, sitting fully robed on Hux’s uncomfortable couch, with his hands on his thighs. Hux shoved the wash kit into his small kit bag. He went back through to his desk, opened the middle drawer and took out a heavy blaster pistol and a handful of power packs. “Always have an extra weapon.” They went in the bag too. From the top drawer of the desk, a small diary. “Don’t think I’ve been indiscreet in here, but best not take the chance.” He looked in the bag again and counted under his breath, then went back in his wardrobe and took two undershirts, one short sleeved and one long sleeved, a pair of long johns, and two pairs of socks. Already neatly rolled, they went in the bag.

“OK. That’s everything I can realistically take.” He deposited the bag on his table, looked at Ren, and gulped. “Let’s do this.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’ve made up my mind. I’m coming with you. I’m running away. Going AWOL. Fucking deserting.” He took in a shaky breath. “Oh, fuck, Ren, I’m deserting. But I’m coming with you. There’s nothing here for me. You’re right. I’m fucked if I stay. It won’t be pretty. Too late to do anything about it. So I’m leaving. Way out. Door.”

Ren leapt up, folded his arms around Hux and pressed his cheek against Hux’s rigid, waxy hair. “Thank you. This means everything to me. I’ll make it worth it. We’re going to have a great time. The Force will be with us.”

Hux said a simple, quiet, “I hope so.” He went to at his desk, took a piece of paper and his favourite antique pen, and wrote a note.

 

_I have served with men and women of honour. Their honour remains._

_Nobody knew._

_Hux._

 

“I don’t want my officers to suffer for my treason,” he said.

Ren put his hand on Hux’s shoulder. “We’ll do this together. From now on, we do everything together.” 

Hux knew they would, and knew it would be somehow be OK. He had made his decision. Trusting in Kylo so utterly and completely felt oddly natural. Of course they were meant to be together. It all seemed so obvious now that everything else had fallen away.

“You carry the bag.” Hux was decisive now, committed. “Then it’s your business. Gives the appearance that you are on your own business, which nobody will dare ask you about, and I will be simply escorting you through the ship. Will it matter that you’ll be seen?”

“No, not now. It’s my ship that matters. As long as nobody takes too much of an interest in bay 4, hangar B, which they shouldn’t, we’re still good. Where’s Phasma?”

“Stormtrooper training facility. Running landing drills.”

“Good. Best we don’t run into her.”

“We don’t have much time. Allow ten minutes to get to the hangar, ten minutes to get outer-side…”

“Five minutes to get outer-side,” Kylo suggested.

“That’s optimistic”

“I can do it. I’ll jump the queue. My ship is pretty manoeuvrable.” 

Hux hoped that Ren wasn’t being overconfident as he had so often been in the past. He had, after all, plainly stated that he was the same man he had always been. “Well, Ren, I hope you’re right. We need to get from ship-side to radius one as quick as we can.”

“It’ll be OK. By the time anyone realises you’re gone, we’ll be light-speed. Blink and they’ll miss us.”

“I know you’re right. I’m just, you know.”

“So, this damn thing.” Ren put on his helmet, clipped the mask locked, raised his cowl and picked up the bag. Through his voice distorter, the words, “This is it. Let’s go,” sounded surreal.

General Hux opened the door and stepped out of his quarters as a base traitor. The walk to hangar B, bay 4 seemed like the longest of his life; any interruption on the way like an ambush.

“General Hux, sir!”

“If it is not a matter of supreme emergency,  Colonel Daseen, it must wait. I am on important business.” Hux was annoyed and snippy. The emotional mask he wore was as flawless as ever. 

Beside him, the brutal metal mask of Kylo Ren turned and stared at Daseen, and Daseen backed the hell off.

“Yes, sir.”

Hux was grateful for the absurd theatricality of Kylo’s mask, then, as he had never been before.

In the elevator, Kylo held Hux’s hand and squeezed. The elevator dropped through ten, fifteen, twenty floors. Hux didn’t keep track of where his stomach seemed to be. He made an effort to breathe steadily.

Hangar B echoed with activity. He and Ren stepped past crew members unloading a logistics vessel in bay 1. He briefly acknowledged the salutes of the one or two soldiers who noticed him. 

Hangar bay 4, though, appeared empty, Hux jolted for a moment at the thought that someone had moved Ren’s ship, or that it might even all have been an elaborate trap. 

“There, in the corner,” Ren said. The far corner of the bay looked wrong: blurry and uncomfortable to look at. “Now see.”

The area in the corner become less discomfiting to look at. Disjointed shapes appeared, then resolved themselves into the form of a small, dark bluish grey craft. A simple mini transporter: shaped like a flattened barrel, and with odd extra winglets at the front, like the barbs on a hunting knife. It looked like it would carry three or four crew with room for some cargo, or maybe a small tactical team.

“You made it _invisible_?”

“No, I made it hard to see. This type of illusion doesn’t persist if you get close, or if you stare too long: once you see it, you see it. But it’s good enough, no?”

It was _fucking impossible_ is what it was. But there was no time to marvel as they walked swiftly to the ship, which was now quite resolutely real.

Ren opened a hatch and stepped inside. Hux followed. “Welcome aboard the _Duskwing_. I used to travel in this with my Knights. A few years ago, before we were given our shuttles.”

Hux wondered at this. He imagined this little unmilitary looking ship landing at some poor unsuspecting settlement, and seven masked figures stepping out to spill some blood. Chaotic and messy, no doubt.

Ren removed his helmet and stowed it into a piece of restraining netting next to a large duffel bag. “If you want to change your mind, you can. You can get off this ship, get back to your rooms and tear up that note. If you want to.”

“No. I’m staying with you.”

“Listen, Hux, the tracker. Is it only you that tracks me?”

“I’m as sure as I can be.”

“Not sure enough, then. Best not risk it.” Ren took his belt off and threw it out of the hatch. Hux followed suit.

“If they weren’t tracking you, they’ll find your belt here, they’ll know.”

“They’ll figure it out anyway. But we’ll be gone by then. So let’s not stand around.” Ren tapped a panel and the hatch swooped shut behind them.

Hux followed Ren past a set of curtained crew bunks to a relatively spacious cockpit with three seats for pilot, co-pilot and navigator.

“Get your kit bag in the restraining netting. We might have to take a few sharp corners.”

Hux carefully hung up his greatcoat. A restraining buckle dangled next to the coat hanger, so he fastened it around his coat. He sat in the co-pilot’s seat and buckled himself in to the harness. His head throbbed to the sound of his own blood pounding through his veins, but he managed to make conversation. Half a lifetime’s practice. “This thing looks like a shuttle, but you’re warning me about taking sharp corners, and this is a five point harness.”

“Well, do up your belts nice and tight and you’ll be fine. Can you reach to the secondary power switch from there? Blue one, says secondary power on it.”

“I can fucking read, thank you. And I can fucking pilot.” Hux enjoyed his time on the flight simulator a great deal, and as his career had progressed had often wished he had the opportunity to put in more simulator hours.

“OK, when we’re clear of the ship and approaching radius 1, I’m going to ask you to switch on secondary power and then feed it in gradually until we hit radius 2. It is very unlikely we will be engaged by any ship, but if we are, I will do my best. With everything I have. And I mean everything.”

Hux couldn’t remember the last time he’d been at the controls of a ship so small. The _Finalizer_ practically flew itself. Keeping the place running was the challenge, not keeping it pointed in a straight line.

“See that one there, heading out of bay 7? I’m going to cut in behind it. They can’t see us. Then we’ll get outer-side, drop down below the keel and go regulation pace to radius 1, then you feed in secondary to radius 2, and then we can get out of here. ”

“Yep. Do it.”

Ren started up the propulsion units, which made a mid-toned hum. He inched the little ship out into the cavernous hangar bay, and watched the big supply vessel from bay 7 slip gently outer-side.

Hux watched crew at work. His men and women. The men and women he had commanded, and whom he was now betraying. “Fucking hell, I’m really doing this. Here I am. A traitor at last.”

“We can end this any way we want to. We can leave. So we’re leaving.” Ren could not help being self-referential and dramatic, echoing the wording of one of the chilling visions he had shared with Hux.

“Look out there. Every single person we can see, and every single person they come into contact with today, whole thousands of them, would be terrified of even thinking of deserting. Because they’re terrified of me, or rather what I stand for. But here I am. Here I bloody am. Burning all my bridges.” Hux looked out of the side window. “Goodbye everyone, I suppose. Goodbye order, hello chaos and depravity.”

“It’s not that bad out there. I’ll show you.”

Through the hangar bay, the _Finalizer’_ s public address system called out “General Hux to meeting room C. General Hux to meeting room C immediately.”

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit…”

“I’d hold your hand, but I have both hands busy.”

Hux reached out and took a corner of Ren’s surcoat in his left hand, and held on tightly.

“You’re not doing what I think you’re doing, are you?” Kylo asked with a wry smile.

“Shut up.”

The personal transport of Kylo Ren and the Knights of Ren slipped, still half-cloaked and half-unseen, out of the mouth of the mighty Star Destroyer the _Finalizer_ , and into unknown territory. 

“Can they really not see us? I thought you turned the whatever it was, the illusion, off.”

“There is a cloaking device. It’s not perfect: the crystals are old. The Force illusion continues to work for those who haven’t already seen through it. Hopefully all that keeps working, but even if it does, we are going to have to do a lot of ducking and weaving.”

Ren wrenched on the controls and took the _Duskwing_ through a sharp 90 degree dive followed by a relatively smooth series of manoeuvres to position the ship under the sharp keel of the Finalizer. A squadron of TIE fighters passed by, a little too close. A lot too close. Ren jinked the Duskwing through their formation.

Incoming communication on the standard channel: _“Unauthorised vessel in octet 5, aft, port and ventral to this ship, this is the Star Destroyer Finalizer. State your intentions.”_

Neither Ren nor Hux responded.

_“Unauthorised vessel in octet 5, prepare to be escorted to the hangar bay”_

Ren increased main power. The display ticked down the km to the outer boundary of radius 1, the sphere around the _Finalizer_ within which unauthorised vessels were not permitted and speed was limited. “Secondary power now, please, Hux.”

Hux switched on and began to raise secondary power.  He was pushed back in his seat as the _Duskwing_ accelerated. 

Ren asked for more power, faster, any concern about being picked up for breaching the radius 1 speed limit long having been eclipsed.

_“Return to the hangar bay or we will open fire.”_

The ship passed through radius 1 and the display started counting down to radius 2, the distance at which it was safe to launch to hyper speed.

_“You have ten seconds to comply.”_

Hux pushed the power to maximum. “You can’t pilot and defend at the same time. Give me control.” He put his hands on the levers in front of him, ready to accept.

Ren flipped a large switch. “You have control.” 

Hux moved the ship in an experimental zig zag, feeling how the _Duskwing_ responded. He felt confident. This was just piloting. He could do that. All his simulator hours and high scores in training told him that he could. At last, he felt busy and useful. Busy and useful were, and had always been, his comfort.

The shields deflected incoming fire from two TIE fighters. Ren engaged one with a small but powerful lateral laser, and scored a direct hit. “Get us to hyperspace as soon as we’ve a chance of making it. And try to dodge these incoming pulses.”

Hux was not a stupid man. He knew that such a small craft couldn’t possibly stand a chance against the pulse cannon of a Star Destroyer. And he knew that he might be able to swerve one pulse, but not multiple pulses. The odds were against him. Nonetheless, he tried, throwing the _Duskwing_ around, feeling motion sick, feeling peril sick.

Beside him, Kylo was deep in concentration.

Another pulse came and another. This was the one he could not swerve or outrun. The blinding bolt of energy would burst against the aft shields, disintegrating them, putting his and Kylo’s five minutes of freedom to an abrupt and final end, and this would surely happen before his hand reached the hyperspace control; surely everything was at an end now.

Behind the _Duskwing_ , space itself seemed to blister and crack. The pulse of energy delivered by the Star Destroyer’s cannon smeared out over the fabric of space as if it had been rubbed by a greasy finger. It formed a convex surface in three dimensions, spreading out in the wake of the _Duskwing_ , dissipating outwards, becoming turbulent at the edges.

Hux hit the hyperspace control, and they were gone.

On the other side, as star lines streaked by, he breathed. “We made it out,” he said, looking across at Ren, who was slumped in his seat. Unconscious. 

_Oh, shit. Oh shit. What has he gone and done? What has the stupid brilliant bastard gone and done to himself now? He hasn’t has he? He hasn’t. He can’t have._

The nav display indicated they were approaching coordinates on Laspen III, an obscure world in the Outer Rim, no doubt a hotbed of the kind of corruption and criminality Hux believed himself born to stamp out. Hux had no idea what was to be found at those particular coordinates on Laspen III or what to do when they got there. He set the autopilot to enter and maintain a distant orbit around the planet, undid his harness and went to check on Ren.

He was breathing, but not conscious. Hux unbuckled him, and dragged him with some effort to the spartan, curtained crew bunks. He managed to heave him into the lowest bunk, manoeuvred him into the recovery position and took his pulse. It was high, but falling. And not weak. Good. Hux stroked Ren’s hair. “I’m here. You’ll be OK.” Never in his entire life had he been so lost or alone. He listened to Ren’s breathing and felt a little less alone, but no less lost. “You used the Force, didn’t you? Against the pulse cannon of a Star Destroyer. My Star Destroyer, at that. You are amazing.” He’d never told him that, not out of the context of fucking him. And not enough, even then. He rested his head on Ren’s broad chest for a moment, comforted by the continuing rhythm of his heartbeat. “I have to get back to the controls and keep an eye on things. You sleep.” Then he kissed Ren gently on his temple, on his scar, and on the bridge of his long, beautiful nose. And he recalled the words he had said before, on the snow-covered collapsing wreck of his life’s ambition. “I’m going to look after you. Stay with me. Don’t leave me.”  He swallowed. “Don’t leave me, darling.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I've got my cheque book, baby  
> Got my bags all packed  
> If you're comin' with me, get in the motor  
> Throw your suitcase in the back" – Dr Feelgood
> 
> AND FURTHERMORE
> 
> "Come sail your ships around me  
> And burn your bridges down  
> We make a little history, baby  
> Every time you come around" - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds


End file.
